The bitterness of defeat

So, I got my results back from the speed dating place: zero matches. Since I may even have misspelled some of the five names I put down (having only learned halfway through the trick of writing the girls’ names on the back of my “match sheet”), I don’t consider this a crushing personal defeat, but it does make me reflect further on how the evening went.

As I’ve suggested, there were plenty of reasons to assume things hadn’t gone well. My dates and I spent a lot of our limited time talking about the event itself: “Isn’t this music so loud?” “It’s my first time speed dating too. What do you think of the idea?” “I’m so tired of giving my spiel.” And however attracted I may or may not have been to her, it was probably a mistake to tell my last date: “I guess you’re my last stop of the evening.”

The other daters, the men especially, were much older than me. My third date was an imposing, Hillary-esque stock broker in a pantsuit, who asked me: “Do you have a problem with women in suits?” Not per se; and not to brag, but older women do often find me attractive. But if you are actually old enough to be my mother (I think was the unspoken subtext of our dialogue), we may have an issue going forward. It was, after all, called an event for “professionals” and not “bums whose idea of home decoration is a candle in an empty wine bottle, and who make bookshelves out of other, hardcover books.” So, consider in more depth the nature of the event before attending: check.

But I’ve spoken about the “ease” I felt; and it was a friendly ease. When I didn’t feel as if romance was forthcoming, should I be surprised that it wasn’t? But this in an issue I’ve touched on several times: is it my honesty, my attachment to a higher ideal of behavior, that prevents me from “acting the part” of a lover? Or is this a silly excuse I make for a pathological shyness? Have I suffered rejection to the extent that I no longer allow myself, subconsciously, even to form romantic hopes? Or is there something deficient in my heart?

In Tolstoy’s War and Peace, one of the two male leads, Prince Andre, drifts away from his wife and gradually from all human attachment. An inexplicable, anti-vital sentiment takes hold of him, and he’s disgusted by the naked bodies of his fellow soldiers when they hold a mud-wrestling match. Finally, dying of illness, his family gathers round him; he kisses his son coldly, then looks about the room “with an expectant air, as if to see if anything else were required of him.”

When the bell rang toward the end of every date, I stopped talking immediately and shook hands like a gentleman. I wondered if anything else were required of me. Often when I got to the next table, the guy in front of me was lingering and had to be ushered on by the host. I stood patiently and waited to see what was required of me.